Western drug companies tested pharmaceuticals on more than 50,000 people in the former communist East Germany, often without the knowledge of patients, several of whom died, the Spiegel news weekly reported Sunday.

Some 600 clinical trials were carried out in more than 50 hospitals until the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, the report said, citing previously unpublished documents of the East German health ministry, pharmaceutical institute and Stasi secret police.

Many major drug companies from Germany, Switzerland and the United States took part, offering up to 800,000 West German marks (about 400,000 euros, $520,000 at today's exchange rate) per study, a boost for East Germany's underfunded health care system, Spiegel said.

Records showed that two people died in East Berlin during testing of Trental, a drug that improves blood circulation developed by then West German company Hoechst, which has since merged with Sanofi, the report said.

Two more patients died in a lung clinic near the city of Magdeburg in tests of a blood pressure drug made by Sandoz, which has since been taken over by the Swiss group Novartis, according to Spiegel.

Patients were often not fully informed about the possible risks and side effects, the weekly said. Other tests involved preterm infants and a group of alcoholics suffering acute delirium who could not give informed consent.

The news weekly said that the companies, when contacted for comment, mostly pointed to the fact that the trials happened a long time ago and said that in principle they always follow strict protocols in drug trials.

Germany's federation of pharmaceutical manufacturers said it saw "currently no reason to suspect that anything irregular happened," Spiegel said.

Reader Comments

about the possible risks and side effects"? Everything in this article is occurring right now in the US. People are injured and/or killed EVERY day, by the side effects of prescribed medicines. The doctors don't fully inform the patients of what the drug MAY do to (not FOR) them, and most of the doctors don't even know, themselves, all the possible hazards.

that the money received by East German government as a payment for these drug trials was to give a "boost for East Germany's underfunded health care system". Mostly likely, all of this money (or maybe, the biggest part of it) ended up in the pockets of the rulers, who were in this case "communists". Who would believe that they be so naive to not know that untested drugs may harm people? The fact that people were not told that they taking untested drugs, just offers proof that those in the government that approved these drug trials, knew what they were doing, osit. And they didn't care!

To me it just shows rather clearly that it doesn't really matter, if psychopaths in power and their minions are "capitalist" or "communist", they are the same: they did, do and will use people for their own gain in complete disregard to the harm that may come to them. It has been going on for a long time and it's happening worldwide right now.

The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside.